the game of chicken

Thursday there was a text, another observation, tidy and perfunctory, transportive. I stood on that corner once, just recently, so I went back to that day, when I waited for him to pick me up to drive me to the place he didn't want me to wander around, and I tried to remember if it smelled like anything that day.

It was just beginning to rain and the sky had that heavy humid iron smell and the rain drops were bigger and landed with a heavy splat! on my skin and t-shirt. And in my memory that is all I can bring back, is the smell of the rain in the summer, mixed with a thousand beakers of humidity and sucking blood out of a wound in a finger.

And so thoroughly did he move me, inspire me, impress me that there around me the walls began a quick crumble, the rocks began to fall in great heavy clumps, I turned and it was descending, like a building being demolished by bombs, like the building had knees that didn't exist before and it cracked in the middle and fell.

Yet still, I hesitated, still I let the bitterness of what's past swallow me and demand my silence, which I gave without struggle.

Then she intervened and suggested the invitation. I am so thoroughly repelled by them in general and don't consider the random texter a prospect (some loser I had the good sense to delete a while ago, um, yeah, how exciting?); I hadn't considered inviting him. So I did, just to see what the answer would be, to see if I could flush out the clues to end the mystery and I referenced his other half (the guitar he plays so well) so that if it is not the singer that is randomly texting me, they would immediately object this reference to an instrument they do not play.

I got nothing. Not a no, not a yes, not a word for a full day, nothing.

Of course, there is a worry that maybe it is not the singer and some random stranger who I once knew will wander into my home tomorrow night and I will have a choice to make about this person I hadn't considered before and hoped to never see again.

Or no one will show up and the bluff will be called, and then it will be hard to admit to not being the fool.

update: 8/2 no one showed...so, the mystery continues...

a memory flashback

Skinny TMNT?!

the view

Walking along the lakefront with Dan!

home run

I felt the shyness bubble up inside me and then let it burst and asked her some questions and we started talking and it was like we've known each other for a long time already and it confirmed what I have discovered and begun to realize that there's just a certain kind of person who is my type, the genuine, kind, lively, warm and fuzzy person (even though I wouldn't necessarily count myself among their ranks) and she was for me.

There are lots of people who are not for me. But her, with her wild mane of curly hair, which I demanded a detailed description of her regimen from start to finish, she is for me. We had such a quick and easy connection that I was already inviting myself into her world and she was tickled by the invitation. We exchanged promises of Barbeques, margaritas, and art gallery visits.

She had a big deep throaty laugh. She is a smart person. And she likes to read. And she was worried about my wandering off during the movie. I assured her that I was just uncomfortable, as I put it, "I'm a giant person with big limbs and I can't be contained in one small tiny area...!" It's been rare that I meet someone I feel an instant connection with, but lately it makes me happy that it is maybe not as rare as it used to be.

I seem to be going through a new cycle of friendships, where a lot of the friends I've had for the last three years I've outgrown. They were all very good friends and I love them still, but it's obvious and apparent to me that I just need something different in my life than what we had. I've noticed that a lot of the newer friends in my life are people who want to do something, be active, walk around, go somewhere, and that is the opposite of the crowd I've been in for the last three years, good great people who are perfectly happy to pass hours upon hours at a table in a bar talking about nothing (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that it's summertime and I just feel this inexplicable urge to go outside, to feel the sun on my skin, to partake in the glories of summer in ways I've never wanted to or cared to before. For instance, on Sunday night I went to Ravinia for the first time with a good friend from school who I don't see often. I received a Ravinia gift certificate as a birthday present three years ago that I never used until Sunday. I wanted to use it, I asked my friends (in my close circle) and they seemed open to it, but we just never got away from that table and that talk about nothing long enough to actually go.

With the park next door to my new apartment being so accessible, I went out yesterday and sat on a bench and read a book and rolled up my sleeves and pant legs so that the sun could hit the pale parts of my skin and I used to laugh at those people and now I am one of them.

And tonight, in a big crowd of people so big it made me hate that I live in a city, I was moody, achy, disinterested and she wiped that all away and made the night worthwhile because she's for me.

Willow

the constant itch

My curiosity got the better of me, and maybe I felt a little guilty too, for ignoring the random texter, so I sent a message Friday morning to him (her? the singer? the know-it-all prospect from forever ago? who is it?). My message was meant to nudge him into correspondence, and encourage him, since I had ignored the two previous messages. I also wanted to show some appreciation for the cleverness and humor of the last message [rats are to cheese as hipsters are to pitchfork].

I didn't expect to hear back for a while, and certainly not relatively quickly, so the response was surprising and fun, we had a couple volleys back and forth before I let it expire, with the hopes that I would hear from him later that night. But nothing came until the next day, and that was an invitation, but I couldn't go, so I gently pushed him away.

Knowing myself better than I thought I did, I deleted all the texts so I could not write during an idle moment of boredom. The mystery of it is consuming me, like a constant itch, I just want to know, but for some reason I don't want to ask.

For one thing, if it is someone I know, and wanted to talk to, I would have their number programmed into my phone. And if it is a guy that I have met over the last nine months, it's probably not someone who I want to hear from. Unless it is the singer and he's coming to his senses and realizes that I am worth doing the work for.

Also, it's kind of fun sending messages to someone and not knowing who it is. A lot of my conversations via text rely on my referencing information and details that only the other person and I know about. I have a very referential (elbow nudging, wink wink) kind of humor with people.

I feel like there was a time period (maybe after that first text) in which I should have just fibbed about losing my phone and not having the number of this friend of mine programmed in my phone. For some reason, at the time, I just didn't care. I was a little put off by that first text [what's the plan tonight], as if I was just some desperate girl waiting by the phone for him to decide to spend time with me and would jump at the chance to do anything with him given the chance. I was mad at the gall, if it is the singer, that I'd deleted him from my life and he was going to swagger in like nothing had happened.

So maybe it's not the singer. I haven't heard from him in any other medium, and usually we corresponded on facebook, but he's no longer my friend, because I deleted him from my life. It could just be some random girl friend of mine I haven't talked to in a while, but I just can't tell right now. And I suppose the mystery will stay a mystery, for now, because I have to wait for whoever it is to text me again...and I look forward to the surprise of the when.

see you at jonquil

Today, while trying to acclimate the kid to the out of doors (look it's not so bad, okay there's a few bugs, but for the most part it's not so bad, yeah, just ignore those drunk people...) we wandered near the park where I spent the formative years of my adolescence, Jonquil Park on Sheffield and Wrightwood near Lincoln ave.

As young kids, we ran wild through the streets and the park was our tree house, our back yard, our place. In the summers we spent every day there, playing tennis, volleyball, baseball or just playing on the playground. During the school year, we spent the afternoons there, weather permitting or not, until it got too cold. Even when it was cold, we just dragged ourselves to the park to meet up before walking around the neighborhood with shovels to make money shoveling sidewalks.

I get nostalgic every time I wander through that corner, every time I see those bronze birds on its corner (where my brother skate boarded and did stunts on roller blades) and every time I realize that piece by piece, the park and playground are being altered.

I suppose it's all a change for the better, but they got rid of the volleyball court and put in some dumb cement planters. They tore down the putty colored cement tables and chairs (we used to call them Flinstone furniture) that had chess boards carved or painted into them and replaced those with beige plastic tables and square seats with a metal plate of a chess board (the squares were green and blue for some unknown reason) bolted to the table on the corners (it will likely not last long under attack of bored teenagers, unlike the cement furniture which could not be destroyed by idle hands).

The worst offense was the playground, where a sprinkler had been set up (a sprinkler, really?) and it was too near the tire swing so the "safety first" flooring of the playground was slippery underfoot because of water from the sprinkler. And the swings were all wrong, in the wrong place. They used to be set parallel to sheffield and the park was an expanse in front of your feet, green grass, baseball diamond, the big wide open sky. Now they sit perpendicular so the view is big fancy redone homes and old shadowy trees.

Among the obvious delegated areas based on age, there is the playground set of the future! that looked like some science project of k'nex gone bad, with long sticks connected by bulbous rubber circles and weird shapes that required savvy studiousness expected of kids who no longer enjoy the playground because it's full of a bunch of babies. The colors are dark, the structure itself looks like some deconstructed space station, and I would love to see how little kids interact with this thing. Do they ignore it or dig the hell out of it? I bet they try in vain to figure out what the hell those shapes are meant for and fall every time from those weird triangles.

In the end, even though the park has changed, I found I could still enjoy it, I could still see it in my mind as it was, and in my mind it was this huge expanse, even though now it is small and simple and different.

chalk bubbles

Thankfully, where there are playgrounds and sidewalks there is an ample supply of sidewalk chalk ground into images at the playground...

the light of day

I saw him at least half a block before he saw me, I think, and it was odd, to see him, striding on the sidewalk, his work shirt slung over his shoulder, his soccer feet kicking out. He has a little swagger I never noticed before and it made me smile.

When I realized it was him, my feet stopped moving for a second. I resumed my walk and frantically decided (my brain began to go into instant and excessive thinking mode) there was no way to avoid him, so I might as well say hello and be pleasant.

I said hello first and to be honest, his haziness made me wonder if he would have just walked right past me. He seemed out of it, tired, a worn out shell of the man I know. Talking to me was laborious and he was being careful again, because he's worried about me again.

So we tried to mutter out sentences and meanings, phrases and words, he mentioned something I was surprised he still recalled so easily, and it pushed the words into my throat and then I let them bubble up, I don't know why I said those two words, they were unnecessary, but I wanted to see if he remembered that too, so I said them.

His eyes narrowed in recognition of the the day it all started, with those words, that invitation. And then he panicked, and I could see his brain flustering and floundering behind his blue blue blue in the daylight eyes (made bluer by the t-shirt he wore) and his mouth jabbered something and his face looked so old and wrinkled and stubbly and worn out.

So I let him go, with words of parting and the relief in his face was like a present to me and I walked away.

Even though I have been avoiding him the world conspires to have us meet in the street like two strangers. When will it be enough to have us never meet again?

termination of lease

So, three weeks after abandoning my apartment, I guess it's safe to say I may have successfully terminated my lease. I am a little cautious still, but worried enough to write about it, I guess. I actually tried not to write about it so as not to jinx it (it would not surprise me one bit if tomorrow I received a letter in the mail informing me that I owe my leasing company twelve hundred dollars, because that is just how things work for me sometimes).

I have to admit, I had valid reasons for terminating my lease, but I didn't exactly go about dealing with the proper "legal" way. I looked online at the tenant's board association and I was supposed to let my leasing company know two weeks before I was going to move out that there were repairs needed and if they weren't done in two weeks time, I could effectively terminate my lease. I sent a letter after I moved out.

It's strange, but I really did love that apartment when I first moved in, and maybe it was just because it was so quiet and it had such a nice view and I could sit at the window and smoke cigarettes and be depressed without feeling like I was a mess (even though I was). Oh, and there wasn't a slimy cheating snake around, that probably had a lot to do with it.

Slowly, its issues began to annoy me. First it was discovering that my kitchen sink leaked. I didn't wash a single dish in that place for ten months. Yeah, urban camping. I had to blowdry my hair at my only available outlet (which was at the opposite end of the apartment) in front of my window. Then the outlet that was in the bathroom (the blow dryer has that big chunky plug with the built in reset buttons and didn't fit) didn't hold any plugs for very long, so when I flat ironed my hair, the plug would fall out without my realizing and I had to start all over and wait for it to heat up again.

Then there was that time I closed my bathroom door and the handle came out of place while I was inside. I panicked, feeling a sense of horrendous and irrational doom. I was running late, I began to sweat, I had my phone so I called Val and she laughed at me in sympathy. Finally I was able to turn the handle against the lock enough to catch the levers to open the door and I could never close the door fully again. Whenever people visited I would forget to tell them and they would find themselves stuck in my bathroom, but only for a moment, because I was there to rescue them.

And the list went on of little things that began to wear down the veneer of my pretense that the apartment was just fine. So I think because I tolerated its limits for so long, I should be able to get it all wrong about leaving it. I hope. We'll see.

week two

Week two

From a distance

and there I was

Lying in the grass, under the willow tree in the park across the street, with my friend and new roommate, but not with her, just lying there, looking up at the branches and leaves and sky and they way they intersected and how the wind moved them, and how birds cut across them and there was a butterfly too. The ground underneath me was at first a slab that felt hard and angry, but I softened into it, or it softened for me and as the time passed, I felt the nuances, my head was cradled by a dip in the earth that was so slight, but it fit the back of my cranium perfectly, as if it was made for me. My hips relaxed, I put my arms at my side and let my ankles roll out. Corpse pose in yoga, they call it. I laid there and just felt it all.

The sounds came in bursts, shouts from the kickball games nearby, people walking the paths, birds chirping, sirens wailing, mixed with the distant hum of constant traffic and the snore of airplanes. Eventually I let them wash over me until all I heard were the birds.

When I got up, my back felt moist, as if the ground and my body had been sweating against each other, and it felt good. I peeled leaves off of my legs and looked back at the grass I had trampled, seeing my figure like a pencil drawing you do as a kid, a traced outline of my body in the ground. Tomorrow it will be gone, the grass recovered, the earth hard again.

As if that wasn't enough, we decided to wander through two patches of prairie grasses and "natural" parts of the park, which have narrow paths worn into them. We pointed out flowers, felt the leaves of plants (one plant felt like velvet on the underside only), and watched bees float around. We guessed at plants and compared growth charts (some sunflowers already had heavy heads hung low, while others had giant leafy stalks with tiny concentric rows of the sunflower's hair huddled in the middle).

I would maybe not do these things on my own, but it is nice to know that I can be easily compelled into such behavior.

The front room and dining room...

Home sweet home.

the weekly baking session begins

Cherry cream cheese muffins

celibatic

It started as a joke, the way a lot of things in my world do--I wonder if that is the only way I feel comfortable saying my desires out loud, testing them in language, trying them out, listening for some truth.

I'm gonna be single for two years, I said. They laughed. And I'm going to be celibate for those two years (though technically celibate means "single" but whatever). The laughter died. The responses could be summed up in one statement: why would you do that to yourself?

I've been grappling with the why for a while. There's a lot of different reasons. I don't know which is the most important. I look back on the landscape of my relationship life and it is full and dense, with hardly any breaks in the tree line. Prior to this, I have been single for less than a year of my adult life. And in that year (which was not twelve months in a row) I pursued any man who looked my way, to little success. In the last nine months, I have done the exact same thing with frustrating results.

So why not take a break? Why not have some time off from this endeavor that brings me nothing but misery?

So how does being celibate change things for me? I've noticed that the bars are full of people who are lonely and desperate (which I include myself among their ranks) and they bring with them the need for fleeting warmth, for the night, and nothing more. I go with my friends to hang out with them but I spend the night distracted by eyes meeting mine and possibilities for the night. Ever since I made that declaration, going to bars has seemed kind of empty, and when I get flirted with and/or propositioned for the evening (which is usually rare, but it has happened), I don't fall like a domino with one push.

I find that I'm a lot less bitter toward men-at-large because I don't expect anything from them and I don't want anything from them. This makes my interactions with men a lot more relaxed. I am glad for that, because I felt like I was wearing man repellent before. Even interacting with my male friends seemed emotionally charged and awkward.

And really, the truth is, being single means more time for me and doing the things I like to do with no worries about someone else, I can write whenever I want, read whenever I want, hang out with whoever I want. And that is really what feels the best.

the good news

He prefaced it with, you're not gonna like what I have to tell you. And then he said the words I didn't know I'd been waiting to hear, that I knew without knowing were going to come, and for some reason, it was like a burden lifted from me, and it just made me feel happier.

the burnham is moving to new york to live with his new girlfriend.

And I say good for him. I am glad for him. I truly am.

There is always going to be a part of me that loves him, for who he was for me, for the times we had, but I am really done with that relationship. I will probably never speak to him again. Sometimes I think about the good times, and I miss the good times, but the bad times haven't worn off yet, the immense abyss of things we lacked as a couple is still there, pulsing under the strained surface of those good memories.

And really, it has been almost nine months and my life feels like it is just reborn. I look back on last year with confusion and surprise, that I was seduced into complacency by someone who had already fooled me once before.

this not about love, 'cause I am not in love II

He hovers in the middle of the bar, and his owlish eyes meet mine at every glance. They are on me when my eyes are trying to hide, I can feel them burrowing into my flesh, every movement watched, every laugh counted, every nod measured. And yet, he stands next to what is certainly his latest prey, she, small and coquettish, glancing up at his face with her heart in her throat, and he stares at me instead.

He pretends not to want to capture her, standing at a calculated distance, holding himself still, watching.

She follows his line of sight and her face fills my peripheral view like a full moon, she is pale and clean and wide.

At one point, when I passed him, a jostle from someone else forced our skin to touch, our arms met behind us, his head turned at the touch, he already knew I was there, and he was hoping I had touched him on purpose, I think, so I shrank behind my friends and tried my very best to ignore what I could not.

I want to pull him aside and tell him all I know, tell him that he is not for me, tell him that it's useless to pretend.

And yet, I know that the moment I am in his scope, I will have a hard time honoring our pact and keeping myself from being magnetized. So I will try again, not in vain this time, to stay away...

this not about love, 'cause I am not in love*

The random texter texted again, despite being ignored last week. I don't know if it is the singer, but it might very well be.

this time, it was a comparison, a joke, an observation. I loved it and felt the thrill of being wooed by words, but again, I did not respond, I did not let it run my day, I noticed it and carried on with the things I had to do, spending maybe ten minutes discussing it at dinner with my friends.

later, I was urged to tell the timeline of our interactions, to find some meaning to it all, and in doing that, we discovered his songs, which I have already consumed, but happily did again, because despite his inability to find love when it is staring him in the face and showing up to hear him sing, he can sing about it very well.

this means nothing without him doing the work to get to know me and a random text or two is not enough.

*lyric from "not about love" by Fiona Apple

the audience

When no one is looking, is the difference. I spent the evening in his presence again, thinking after the last time that finally the pain might have been quelled, that he realizes I've moved on, because I walked away from him. I didn't hang on his every word and most importantly, I pulled away from his magnetism.

This time everyone was aware and watching which made me aware and nervous, and him awkward and strange and it was so uncomfortable that I had to leave. I was so mad at him for pretending I didn't exist (is it because he's trying to show everyone that he's over me too? Why can't I stop caring? When is he going to leave?).

I also took to pretending he didn't exist, using my hair as a curtain, hiding him from my view. I sat and tried to listen to the people near me, but his laughter as usual broke my concentration and made my head instantly swivel.

He knew I was there before he even saw me, and it was obvious that he had bolstered himself to speak to me in front of everyone, just to say hello. After that, he was reclusive, keeping his back to me, hiding himself in the center of his group of coworkers on the other side.

When I was leaving, he was coming back in. When I was coming back in, he was leaving.

I said, "See you later, guys," during the last of these frustrating passings and he, hearing me, even after just pretending not to see me, listening for me, said good night to me. None of his friends was around to witness this. I received a hello and a goodbye and that was all he coud spare for me, in the midst of his shaking unsteadiness, I got a bookend of greetings and that was all. And I learned that I can't let it go...

beauty, joy and self-expression

Funny that I forgot those words, what they meant, what they were supposed to do, the fuel that they were supposed to be for me.

And funny that at the time, I was only those three things so rarely, so little of my life. It's been almost five years since that declaration that I could be those things, that I was those things, that I am beauty, joy and self-expression. It used to be five percent of my life I was that and the rest of the time I was a snivelling, shrinking, insecure mess. Five percent. Really. My entire life was dictated by my insecurities.

So when challenged to remember what those words were, I had to search for them in my archives and when I found them I was surprised. Because it's so easy to feel like who I am is who I've been for a long long time. Even who I am right now is vastly more self assured and relaxed than who I was a year ago. And I thought, at the time, that I had reached the summit of self assurance and relaxation.

Back then, those words seemed so far away and so hard to see in myself. I didn't believe that it could be words used to describe me, ever. I believed in the process though and I succumbed to the process and along the way, I became those words and forgot that miserable girl I had been.

Unearthing them today, after years of not thinking of them, after a lifetime lived in the last five years, I am surprised at how small they seem, how perfectly normal they seem, how easy they seem. Even joy, which can be a difficult thing to grasp, I find at so many intervals in the day and I feel it constantly.

Today I sat in the park (I am really enjoying having my "back yard" be a giant park next door) and listened to people relish in the summer afternoon; while I tried to read my book. The sounds were a mix of shouts from ball games, dog owners comparing notes, and a father throwing a ball to his son. And strangely enough, even though I went to a remote bench, with my nose in a book, people surrounded me. I wanted to be alone, so instead of rolling my eyes over people not knowing exactly what I wanted, I got up and took a walk around the park, noticing a group of sparrows flitting in and out of the rafters of the stands near the running track. Those sparrows made me smile, out loud in front of other people.

Before, I was so concerned with who was noticing what a mess I was that I couldn't appreciate the little things and I wouldn't have seen those sparrows. And maybe I need some new words to live into the next five years of my life...

The Pear Tree Watch of 2009

the secret baker

First there was the gathering of what was needed, a round up, a collection, and there is joy even in this part, which seems like it is nothing, but yes, even here there is joy. They fill the table and it pleases me. I buttered the muffin tins with a pat of butter between my fingers. They still smell of butter, and I wish I could describe in words what that smell is, but it is a very pleasant smell and it makes me happy when I raise my hand up to sweep my hair behind my ear and that smell wafts out even though I've washed my hands a dozen times since.

I find the paper sack of the flour feels dusty from prior use. The sugar is organic and hasn't been opened before and has a pinkish hue. The salt is sea salt and its crystals are like diamonds. The baking powder is the whitest white ever, like ground chalk. Somehow, in this new light, when poured on top of each other, the variations are all I can see.

The wet ingredients are next, and they too take on special significance, as if they cannot be outdone by the dry goods. The cage free brown shelled egg cracks obediently against the glass bowl, but the shell is strong and does not splinter into a million pieces the way the shells I've used before had. The soy milk stands in for milk and fortifies the mix with vitamins...adding a slightly healthy tinge to the muffins. The melted butter (not just any butter, but Kerry's Irish Gold butter which is like the purest tastiest most delicious butter I've ever tried) slips into the milk and egg and it all mixes into a soft yellow glow, which foams slightly.

I chop walnuts and dried cherries and toss them into the dry mix before pouring the wet ingredients. Mixing the batter is the hardest part. You cannot mix too much or the muffins will come out too dense. You have to mix just enough so that the flour gets moist. I spoon the mix into my muffin tins and usher them into the oven. I watch them too much, as if it is the first time I have made muffins, because really it's been so long that it may as well be. I turn on the oven light and watch from the table the little mounds grow into peaks.

I never time my baked goods, I simply take them out when the smell of the muffins fills the house, because that is always when they are done. There is a certain pleasure derived from that smell, for me it is the assurance that I got all the elements correct, it is the sign that all is well.

After they cool for a few minutes I ease one muffin out and eat it. It is slightly crunchy on the top and bottom (the buttering of the tins with the good butter means the bottoms of the muffins are deliciously crispy and browned) but inside the muffin is crumbly and airy and perfect. Even after all this time I can still craft a tasty muffin, in a new kitchen with new ingredients.

For me, baking is a physical experience that I enjoy more than the eating of what I make. I love the feeling of all the items, the handling, the hands on aspect. There is so much of the world that is sterile and removed and separate. To bake is to feel and to feel is an opening into feeling good, and it has been too long.

I survived. I breathed air. And that was all.

The truth is, you don't recognize failure until it is behind you. You can't smell the stink of horror until it is a dying memory. You don't know how bad it was until you get out of the hole.

The hole was my old apartment, the one I took as an effort to stop sleeping in the beds or other generosities of my friends. The apartment that was at once a monk-like retreat (with its sparsity, it's lack of things, it's need to have me generating action for there to be any action). I spent the last eight months there like a robotic husk of myself. I woke up. I went to work. I drank myself into a stupor. I collapsed into bed. Rinse, repeat, with the occasional variable. I spent as little time there as possible. I went through the motions of a life. Not my life. Just some life. I survived. I breathed air. And that was all.

The only true moments of clarity and inspiration I had in that apartment involved the cleanse, in which I had to force myself to find something to do with this newfound time on my hands--it turns out that when you don't eat or drink for three weeks you have an amazing amount of time to waste. Also, I could sometimes stimulate myself into doing yoga, if a friend was involved or if I felt particularly in need of yoga.

Oddly enough, what really made me aware of just how wrong my apartment was for me was the addition of the two kittens. They took up my space with great joy and I felt trapped in their path, in that tiny shoebox of an apartment, feeling like I was part of the obstacle course they formed where they catapulted (heh heh "cat"-apulted) themselves in an oblong circle like a race track, starting with the bathroom, they chased each other through the shower curtain and in the tub and out the other end and out the bathroom and past the kitchenette and over the chair and leapt onto the hamper and skidded across the window sill and dived into the bed, where I was laying and attempting some forgery of sleep, and then raced to the hall and back into the bathroom where it began all over again.

I had never imagined that there was something wrong with my place until I was under siege by two kittens and I realized there was no where for me to hide.

In my new apartment, I have a door to my room. I feel good about this. This makes me happy. Even though I can hear the other people who live in my apartment and are a part of me now, if my door is closed there is nothing they can do, nothing they can say, they cannot bother me and even if they knock I can say, hey, I'm busy. And I couldn't do that before, I couldn't lock the cats in the bathroom, because the doorknob was broken and they would probably just yelp at the door.

Also, there was the issue of confinement, that everything was in one space, that I was sleeping a mere five feet away from my refrigerator and it was a loud refrigerator that frequently hummed itself into my consciousness every night. I got so used to that noise that the last night I slept there with that thing unplugged (because it was empty and unnecessary) I couldn't sleep.

But what that apartment taught me is that no matter how bad it got, no matter how horrendous it looked, no matter how sad and pathetic it all seemed, I wasn't with him and that was all that mattered. I didn't go back to him, I didn't beg him to love me again, I didn't once wonder if it could ever be again.

Okay, I felt like a burn victim and every day was a measure of just how much I was getting back to "normal" and every single day I spent there was like a salve, a totally needed part of my life where I needed to feel that lack, that disparity, that hopelessness. I had to face the facts that maybe I wasn't a bad person despite what happened, because I had really put my entire self into that relationship, it was the first time I had actually given a fair amount of effort to being a good girlfriend. I had to realize that I didn't fail entirely, because he set up blockades at every opportunity and I swiftly swam past them all; he was a contrary worm. I had my faults. Maybe I was a little too fluid, a little too loose. Being the opposite of what I had been maybe seem a little fishy, a little suspect and maybe he was waiting for that horrid woman he had known to rear her ugly head and maybe it was not too hard for him to lure her to the light.

I needed time and space and air to breathe to get over that failure. It is no surprise to me that people I haven't seen in months have suddenly appeared in my scope. He forced me to be small. The failure forced me to be tiny. I hate that I had to pull myself inward and shrink. I have missed so much of my friends, but I feel like I am waking up from a thing I didn't know I had, that I thought moving out and being on my own had solved and I had no idea that it was not over. Today was the first day I could talk about it without being upset or crying or being mad at him. I fucked up. He fucked up. We fucked each other up. And now, we don't have to worry about that anymore. He wanted me to be happy, but he had no idea it involved him not being in my life anymore.

And now: I don't know his number, I don't know his stories, I don't know his world anymore and it is all because I set myself away into that apartment where I didn't have anything except myself.

And I learned there, in that place, that there is nothing I need except myself.

the week in review

Saturday: spent the entire day indoors. Watched the emotional divide occur between me and val; realized one day we won't belong to each other anymore. wondered why I haven't heard from walter and then I consider...

Friday: spent most of evening indoors getting my buttons pushed by walter. He has a special talent for being a doddering oaf around me and I have a list of pet peeves and indiscretions as long as my arm. I just cannot fathom why someone so capable can be so profoundly obtuse. The worst offense: we've eaten dinner, he has something stuck in his teeth. He asks me for floss. I give him some. He proceeds to floss in front of everyone, smacking his lips and twisting his tongue around even though I handed him the floss in the bathroom. I object. He treats me like a crazy person and continues to floss in the presence of three people who are his friends. No one says anything. He then dangles the floss in my face on his way to the garbage.

Also on Friday: I receive a text message from a number not in my phone book and I wonder who it could be from. Rather than respond immediately, I think about it and eventually forget it. If it was someone I wanted to talk to, I'd know their number. I suspect it may have been the singer who I've basically deleted from my life and I don't care if it was him or not. I feel a strange sense of freedom I don't recognize. Usually I would clamor and fuss over such an event, instead I let it pass.

Thursday: spend the morning languishing in bed, then cleaning my newly acquired bathroom. It is a big bathroom and has a lot of nooks and crannies that are all beyond filthy. I hunker down for a long clean and then shower in the sparkling white tub. I clean even though I won't be there for three days. I clean even though I don't have to. I want to be a good roommate this time around.

Wednesday: I spend almost the entire day trying to rid my newly acquired bedroom of dust bunnies and boxes from my move. I am successful in managing to squeeze my life into one small space and it doesn't look half bad. There is a strange kind of energy in that room that is good, vibrant stuff, but totally different than any other room I've ever had. It has a window facing north, I will sleep with my head facing west and it is in the middle of the apartment rather than the front or back.

Tuesday: I work for eleven hours straight. I am barely able to stand upright at the end of it, but I know what awaits me at the end is worth it; getting together with an old friend of his, who has become a friend of mine and the promise that we will go to taqueria moran. I am enthralled by a visit to his work studio and his endeavors and saddened by the hipsters at taqueria moran. More saddened by the fact that I look more like a hipster to unscrutinizing eyes than I'd like to. I go home, filled up to bursting by my friend's presence and I spend the night festering in happiness again (the second time in a week!).

Monday: The dog walking stint comes to a thankful close. I negotiate like a mad woman via text about keys, times and information regarding the dog. I get mosquito bites, I meet dog parents, I stand around while the dog chases others dogs. I find out after work that my bartender has named walter my "fusband," a combination of the words "fake" and "husband" and I wonder when the firing squad will ever relent and if my absence from that place will be enough.

In essence, my week was as full as it always is, but there was something different about this week and it was me.

summer; so far

Strawberries and cherries that taste like they should. Lightening bugs that smolder in the darkness. The sun's heat on my skin forming new freckles. Mandatory uniform of sunglasses, capri pants or skirts, t-shirts. Wanting to eat watermelon. Deviled eggs and friends. Fireworks of the big fat caliber. The lake, bright and teal. Sitting outside just because. Daylight lasting well into the night. A ride on a Ferris wheel. The wind in my face. Chasing bunnies through grass at the conservatory. Scratching mosquito bites.

Maybe it's just that this winter in particular seemed interminably long and that's why summer seems so intoxicating...

the general store:

It is already home and I am already immensely happier in so many ways, though disappointed in some overshadowing ways (and really, is that a surprise) but I'd rather shine my light on the better side, that it is already home, that I have already had great good times with her, my new roommate who I should have roomed with long ago; and it is only been a week. She is a glow and I am a moth. I fit in here, I like it here, I am happy here. This makes sense. The last place did not make sense. I don't miss being there at all, there is no confusion over which bus to take, and it is good.

I experienced this weekend, a moment of satisfaction, which was explained as drunkenness--but I wasn't drunk, I was happy. That's how rare it is that I'm happy. The fireworks were plentiful, my friends were there, and I was glad. I didn't care about where I had to be and how I had to get there, for at least a little bit.

All this weekend I had to resist him and it felt easy, really, I was just across the street from him, the magnetic disc, and I noticed and walked away, and then, of course, it was arranged in a way I could never plan well enough, by coincidence, by the magnestism, boom, we crashed and there was nothing we could do differently and no pulling away that would work, everyone fell away until there was just us and when will he go away? Just leave. The sting of his earnest conversation, the politeness, the wretched sense of fakery, I hate hate hate it and him. Even more I hate that I get caught in his pull, but this time, this time I managed to walk away and it was the most natural part of the exchange for me..

And then there was today, having had yesterday, trying to prove that I didn't care, but it was all I could do not to look up at every figure that neared, every face that passed, and it was never his. And when it was, it was a cheerful, polite hello with nothing else, because I was in a spot that forced him to be distant, and I was there on purpose. When I left, I didn't say goodbye and I felt his eyes on me, burying themselves into my back and I dared myself not to look back and then I promised myself never to go in there again. It is a promise I will break because I have broken it before.

Even though I worked all weekend it felt like a vacation, because things were slow at work, because I wasn't at home, because I am putting off the important parts for now.

I feel the draw to things I cannot control, and I am more okay with it than I have ever been, though now I am putting the leash on that one area I let run rampant and no longer actively pursue and just a couple weeks in, with the whirlwind of Other Things to Do, men remain a mysterious enigma I worry I will never figure out, but I feel no dire sense of panic from this.

the wasteland

The last hour of the last day of the Taste 09.

the hair factor

It came as a shock, that memory, and as I pulled it out of its sepia toned solution, bathed in nostalgia, I saw that connected to that memory were two more that were similar, my brain had filed those moments away together and they came rushing at me, the sappy sentimental moments that I'd forgotten.

The first one was just recently, as I was obsessing over every detail between the singer and me, every moment that I should have known it was all too good to be true, except there weren't any and then I remembered, like a shockwave, when he turned and smiled down at me and took the hair covering my face between his fingers and swooped it away.

As if that weren't enough the magnetic disc quickly followed and I recalled the moment when I was turned toward him and the rush of our breaths precluded the exchange of words and our eyes locked and the tip of his finger stumbled through the air like an engorged bumblebee and he drew a line across my forehead, watching my bangs fall back into place before he whispered, "I like your fringe."

Almost like a gush of oil came the next one, which was buried deep down, the memories of the burnham I've been trying to forget, but it couldn't be contained and I was right back there on that couch, in that quiet apartment, in that territory of discomfort and hesitation and he was looking at me and I was looking at him and then he pushed a lock of my hair out of my face that had fallen there when I had laughed off one of his many compliments and looked down in shame and he pushed it away and told me I was beautiful.

Now all I can see is the ridiculousness of my supposed thresholds; how easily I was snake charmed.

you tell em

The latest Barbie.